The Way It Ends

by Marnie Vinge

  “I need to change the bandage. How does it feel?” she asks.

  “Hot,” Birdie replies.

  The first indication of growing infection. Vanessa knows this doesn’t bode well. Hopefully she can have the baby before the infection reaches the point of no return. If Tom loses Birdie, he’ll mourn her; if he loses the child, he’ll kill both of them.

  Vanessa scoots closer and begins unraveling the first dressing that the wound received. Like uncovering a mummy, she doesn’t know what waits for her beyond the gauze wrappings. A small dark punctuation sized dot of blood grows with each layer that’s removed until the gauze is a brownish-red and Vanessa can smell the iron keeping the girl alive.

  Finally, the wound reveals itself. A yawning hole in her shoulder, it appears that the bullet shattered the bone. Birdie’s arm lies limp at the mercy of her injured collarbone. The tiny spiderwebs Vanessa feared she might see aren’t there. She feels some relief. There is a redness around the wound. It was probed for material the night of the shooting, but nothing was found. Vanessa wonders if she digs her bare finger into the hole if she would find the shard of metal causing the angriness of the wound.

  She reaches a hand towards Birdie’s shoulder and the girl shrinks away. She immediately groans, seeming to regret the sudden and instinctual movement of her body.

  “Be still,” Vanessa commands.

  Birdie grits her teeth as Vanessa brings her hand to the wound. She looks at Birdie’s belly. The baby will come any day. She wonders if the trauma of digging around for a piece of a bullet that might not even be there is worth it. She imagines the prospect of causing Birdie to lose the baby.

  She’ll wait for now.

  Vanessa senses something. Like a wolf catching the scent of prey, she stiffens at the back. She removes her hand from Birdie’s shoulder and places it on her belly. She waits for a moment but feels nothing. The feeling of something returns to her. Sometimes, she feels that she’s able to pull back the curtain that hangs between this world and the next and see with the second sight.

  Now, she feels a shadowy presence. She struggles to name it. It moves in her mind, familiar and yet strange, hugging the coiling matter of her brain. A darkness. A growing darkness that surrounds the baby. She removes her hand from Birdie’s belly. The girl’s eyes, wide and startled, follow Vanessa’s hand as she places it back in her lap and stands from the bed.

  She prepares the necessary materials for the bandage and dresses the wound. The stark white of the gauze stands out against Birdie’s skin, tanned by the sun. Vanessa knows that the landscape out here has been hard on both of them. They’ve both aged. Tom must have, too. But Vanessa wants to embrace the things that are coming to her with the passage of time. One of those things is her ability to see.

  When she finishes, she gathers her things and retreats to the door. She looks back once more at Birdie, who gazes out the window. Vanessa hates the girl. She’s hated all of the girls from the very first one years and years ago. But she didn’t have the strength to leave before. She didn’t have the strength to pull herself out of the hole that Tom had placed her in.

  Things were changing. Something was moving on the ranch. There was an energy in place. An unstoppable force that Vanessa knew could be held back no more than the tide.

  And she was ready for it.

  IONE

  I wake to a pulse that throbs in my temples. One, two, three, four—the beats of my heart pound a rhythm that makes me painfully aware of the fact that someday it will stop. It seems like it’s pounding too hard. Like it will over-exert itself and have to stop. Sometimes the thought of my own annihilation overwhelms me. A black cloud gathering energy, it hovers on the edge of my consciousness. It’s in moments like this—the quiet dawn—that I’m most aware of it. These moments when I’m alone and at my weakest seem to be its favorite to prey upon.

  Before the anxiety can blossom into panic, I roll over on the couch and my cell phone falls with a thud on the carpeted floor. My neck aches, constricted to a cramped position for most of the night. I realize that I’m alone and I’m grateful. Philip left sometime after midnight, I think. I grab my phone and press the home button. No new messages. I guess he was underwhelmed.

  I can’t imagine that I’d be good company at the moment. I’m barely good company to myself. A hangover settles in for the day as I stretch my back. It goes pop pop pop, angry at me for not spending the night on the fancy mattress I invested in last year. My head pounds and reminds me that I’m not in my twenties anymore.

  I stop mid-stretch and my eyes widen. I remember the events of the night before. I remember seeing Tom’s photo on the news—the shooting—and hearing that Birdie had been wounded. It seems surreal and for a moment I wonder if I hallucinated the entire thing. I grab my phone once more and open the browser to my last viewed tab.

  An article that I had trouble making complete sense of last night waits for me there.

  SELF-HELP GURU AT THE CENTER OF MURDER INVESTIGATION

  So, I didn’t imagine it.

  I comb through the article, gleaning the most important details: there was increasing tension between Tom’s outfit and the ranch that meets his property line. Shots were fired and two people were hit. One of them—a ranch hand—died. The other is Birdie.

  And the most important detail of the entire thing is that Tom has refused to come out of the compound to face the authorities. According to another article that I find, this has resulted in the FBI launching an investigation. The word siege comes to mind but feels surreal and intangible. All of the articles omit this word. This is such a far stretch from where I left Tom all those years ago. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the whole thing.

  I delve deeper into the rabbit hole of news stories.

  One after another they fill my screen. Images of Tom at self-help events, arm draped over followers of his book, The Way. He beams, so proud of himself. Vanessa, his long-suffering wife, smiles absently in one of them. In another, I see Birdie in the background. The consensus among most of the reports is that Tom is a deluded messianic figure, having retreated deeper and deeper into paranoia the further he got into this charade.

  Upon publication, Tom attended every event related to the book. The further along things went—the more fame he garnered—the more suspicious he got and the more probing the articles about his teachings became. It had become a cycle that Tom had fed with his lack of willingness to be transparent the more famous he became.

  I begin to wonder how this happened. I heard about the publication of the book. I’d laughed. Self-help seemed below Tom—or at least Tom seemed to think he was above it. And also, what credentials did he have for it? A predatory composition professor with a penchant for girls barely out of their teens? Who could he help?

  I start searching for information about the book. The first page I land on is the Amazon listing.

  Have you ever wondered how some people transcend the pain of life and are able to function in high stress situations in a way that puts the rest of us to shame? Have you ever experienced a loss so debilitating that it derailed your entire life? Do you want to live a life free from pain, particularly the pain associated with loss? The Way is the answer.

  We spend so much of our lives worried about the world around us. Plugged in to artificial connection, we lose ourselves. In The Way, you’ll find out how to disconnect from the things in your life that are bringing you pain or that are sources of potential pain and suffering.

  Dr. Tom Wolsieffer, a former creative writing professor and current life coach, preacher, and self-help expert, outlines his ten tenets for self-improvement that culminate in the reader becoming self-sufficient enough to escape life’s worst pain: grief.

  I’d been so intent on avoiding any sort of exposure to Tom in the past few years that I’d managed to see the book in an airport and avoided picking it up, afraid that by touching the book, I’d have rubbed a bottle and released a genie that was eager to stretch its limbs.

/>   The cover gives the appearance of a tome bound in leather with small gold-leaf lettering on its weathered black cover. The publisher wants thirty dollars for it. Unwilling to shill out a penny that will find its way into Tom Wolsieffer’s pocket, I go back to my search engine results.

  The next article I stumble upon features a less-than-flattering take on the whole debacle.

  LOS ANGELES – Self-help guru turned cult leader Tom Wolsieffer is facing a standoff with the Federal Bureau of Investigation this morning. Following the murder of a local rancher and the wounding of his spokesperson, Birdie Hauer, Wolsieffer is tasked with answering for the crimes committed at the border of the ranch that he owns in Kenton, Oklahoma.

  UCLA Psychologist Mia Hitchcock weighed in: “Tom Wolsieffer has built something out there. It’s not a fanbase anymore; it’s a following.” Hitchcock goes on to talk about the dangers of such devout followings. “It dangerous when you get an individual who has absolute power over a group of vulnerable people. The people who have chosen to follow Wolsieffer’s book are people that are looking for an end to their pain. It puts them in a very precarious position.”

  Dr. Hitchcock has been one of Wolsieffer’s most vocal critics since the publication of his self-help hit, The Way. Tenets such as the Policy of Disconnection, which encourages the elimination of close personal relationships in order to avoid grief later in life, have garnered heat from critics.

  “Not only is it psychologically unsound, it’s the perfect recipe for creating a cult,” Hitchcock says. “You take these people and strip them of their most intimate relationships. It’s human nature to seek out a replacement for that. We aren’t wired to be solitary creatures. So, the next best thing for these people is going to be whatever Tom Wolsieffer provides for them.”

  KPWTV has reached out to Dr. Tom Wolsieffer but has been unable to get any comment.

  I haven’t looked further than this into the policies outlined in Tom’s book. I task myself with that now, searching for a simple outline of what The Way has to offer. I go to the Wikipedia page.

  Unmarred by any recent additions poking fun at Tom’s current situation, the information seems to be reliable if somewhat shocking. Seven tenets make up the outline for the book:

  Disengagement

  Separation

  Disconnection

  Independence

  Seeking

  Community

  Enlightenment

  In the first step of the process, Tom encourages readers to distance themselves emotionally from things happening around them. This includes the things that cause them stress. Things that might otherwise be argued to be important, like jobs. He suggests a modified stoic approach.

  In step two, he advises his followers to separate themselves from their material possessions. To anyone watching, it would look like a sure sign of suicidality. Three goes on to encourage the final and most important piece of disengagement, which is disconnection. This means unplugging from the most important relationships in your life. The ones that have been with you all your life. Tom’s theory is that if you can cut that tie now, grief will wash over you in a neutered version. Yes, it will be painful. But not as painful as it would be if you foolishly invested yourself fully into those relationships.

  With independence, Tom encourages a relocation. Convenient, I think. Seeing as how he’s got a prime new spot for people to stake a claim in. The next step, seeking, encourages meditation and a spiritual quest. By far, it’s the least idiotic of all the tenets.

  In community, Tom urges followers to find other like-minded people. Followers of The Way, if possible. Again, it reeks of a man grooming strangers for a cult.

  And finally, Tom promises enlightenment. He promises a life free from pain with a peace that pervades every moment of that life.

  The whole thing is ridiculous to me. The rules are no more valid than notes for a novel scribbled on a café napkin. There’s no psychological basis for any of them and they will culminate in emotional ruin for these people. And now, with what’s going on out in Kenton, perhaps even death.

  And among those people is Birdie.

  No updates had been released by officials as to her condition. Not that they would know much since the closest they’d gotten before weapons had been drawn by those inside the compound was the cattle guard.

  I think of my friend and her gap-toothed smile. The way I’d been so enchanted by her when we met comes over me. And I remember something else: a promise.

  I’ll always come back for you, Birdie.

  IONE

  7 YEARS AGO

  It was early October when I went to Dr. Wolsieffer’s office for the first time. A piece I’d been working on hadn’t gelled in the way I’d thought it would. I wanted to ask his opinion on a few of the pages in private, without the pissing contest that occurred during class. Part of me was a little bit afraid of him, the other part painfully aware of how handsome he was.

  He was like a wolf. Beautiful but dangerous.

  I knocked lightly on his door once inside the offices of the writing department. Most of the professors had gone home. Unofficially, Dr. Wolsieffer kept hours late in the evening. I planned on taking advantage of the fact that everyone had scurried out of class that Thursday evening, Birdie included, eager to get a head start on the weekend and make campus corner crawl with the life of an anthill.

  I waited only a moment before the door swung open to reveal an office in disarray. I’d stumbled on Dr. Wolsieffer in the midst of a rearrangement of his vast library. He smiled, though, like he’d been waiting for me to arrive. There wasn’t a hint of annoyance or irritation that he was going to have to deal with yet another student’s questions. I returned his smile.

  “Miss Larsen,” he greeted me. “Come in.”

  He stepped aside and I tip toed around the stacks of books, looking for a perch.

  “Have a seat. Here,” he moved quickly and bent down and moved a stack of books directly in front of one of the two chairs that sat opposite his desk. Another pile occupied the seat and he moved those, too. He cleared a small path for me, and I took my seat, only letting myself rest on the edge of it.

  “You ever read this one?” he asked as he held up one of the books that he had moved in the shift to make room for me to have a seat. He turned the novel so that I could see the cover. Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy. I shook my head.

  “One of the greats,” he said. “A personal favorite.”

  He handed me the book. For a moment I stared at it then I reached out. Our fingers met on the cover and I looked at him. He let his grasp on Anna Karenina linger for a moment after I reached for it.

  “Thank you,” I took the book and brought it protectively to my chest. He had an unnerving way about him. It was like he could see right through your pretenses. It wasn’t that he was undressing you with his eyes, but you were naked in front of him. He could smell fear. He was a predator of the highest order. And I found myself spellbound by him, like a moth staring dreamily into the beautiful glowing blue maw of a bug zapper.

  “I’m having a small get-together at my house this weekend, if you’d like to come,” his statement was a shock to my system. I’d heard of the parties, of course; they were the fabric campus lore was woven from. And here was my very own personally addressed invitation to one of them. It was the sort of thing that others in the class—both male and female students—would have killed for. Undergraduate students fought for the sparse invitations to Dr. Wolsieffer’s parties; they were primarily populated by graduate students and professors.

  “If you’re busy,” he let his sentence trail off.

  “I’m not,” I recovered from my shock, too enthusiastic. He raised an eyebrow. “I’d love to come,” I clarified.

  He smiled. He told me that I could bring someone if I wanted to. Of course, the first person that came to mind was Birdie. I waited until the last minute, not presenting the idea to her until the afternoon before the party. Part of me hoped she would refuse
to go, and maybe part of me hoped she would convince me to do the same.

  But she agreed to go. Her motivation for attending was different than mine, I knew. Like someone who’d just shot up for the first time, I wanted another fix. I wanted to see if that electricity that I’d felt between myself and Tom had been a fluke or if, perhaps, there was something there. I pushed that line of thought back deep into the vein from which it had bled, nicked open by Tom’s charm.

  We got ready in the room that Birdie rented in an old house east of campus. The place swarmed with a party thrown by the other girls who lived there. Any other time I would have been content to play beer pong or flip cup on the beaten old walnut table in the dining room, but tonight I felt possessed by a force entirely foreign to myself. I got ready with an uneasiness about what I was doing and what my motivations for it were. I knew they weren’t entirely pure. There was a part of me that wanted more from Dr. Wolsieffer than he should give me.

  Birdie’s eyeliner winged out sharply enough to slit a throat. She looked purposefully disheveled from her ripped sweater to her scuffed boots and wild hair. Her dark eyeshadow was smudged below her eyes, but that eyeliner was perfect. It always was.

  I fidgeted with my own sweater and applied and reapplied my dusty rose lipstick until I couldn’t look at it anymore.

  “Anxious?” Birdie raised an eyebrow and locked her phone. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Why would I be?” I bluffed, and a nervous laugh came out. She smiled, but there was no happiness there. I sensed something shifting between us, like the slow unstoppable movement of a single continent becoming two.

  We took my car and rode in silence to the party. I turned on the radio and quickly switched it from the country station I’d been listening to in favor of something I knew Birdie would like. She didn’t seem to care, though. We parked on the side of the street a few houses down. Cars piled into the huge driveway. The house echoed the architecture of the university.